The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project

Summary

Home visits lead to respectful partnerships between parents and educators, creating the foundation for understanding and cooperation between home and school that is vital to every student's success.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

In many schools districts across the nation a cycle of blame continues to exist between parents and school site personnel. At many of the schools where this blame exists there is a pervasive history of low student achievement, high levels of poverty, and high percentages of children entering schools as English language learners. Home visits help make educators more culturally competent and help effectively engage families leading to academic and social success for the student.

How will this project solve this problem?

Most schools still rely on outdated strategies to engage families.Home visits are a more effective strategy because they bring parents and teachers together for a meaningful conversation outside the classroom.For example during the visit each teacher and family member shares hopes and dreams, expectations, experiences, and tools regarding the child's academic success.Once trust is built a partnership is formed and then they are empowered to make the necessary changes for a student to succeed.

Potential Long Term Impact

Decades of research show that when parents and teachers work together, students do better academically and socially; attendance increases, student performance improves, graduation rates increase, and more students apply to college. Independent studies of our home visit project show similar outcomes as noted above, as well as, increased skill sets for both educators and families. Increasing the funds of knowledge for both educators, parents and teachers, raises student success.